


The Act of Being Found

by listlessness



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, M/M, Sibling Incest, burgeoning relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 08:43:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20504144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listlessness/pseuds/listlessness
Summary: Diego has always been good at biting his tongue. Growing up with a stutter has rendered him an artist at non-verbal forms of communication.He's even better at refusing to admit things to himself.





	The Act of Being Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Electra_XT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electra_XT/gifts).

> Written for [Electra_XT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electra_XT/pseuds/Electra_XT) for the RelationShipping 2019 challenge. I hope you enjoy!

It was difficult to say when it had started. 

Before Five had left, that much was for certain. Diego could remember sitting opposite from Luther in class, and feeling something hot churning inside his stomach. Bile tinged the back of his throat as he tried to swallow it down, potent and acrid and burning the knot that wouldn't budge. 

It was still there when Ben died. It was a little easier to swallow by then, and Diego was able to push it down and ignore it. If it had meant something in the earlier years, he'd learnt to forget it. It became something else. Diego _labelled_ it something else. 

And that was easy enough to do. Luther was the epitome of a golden child. Preferred, fawned, literally Number One with a crown of golden hair. Standing behind him in the afternoon made Diego feel like a little shadow. Smaller, slighter, with dark hair and features and a predilection of a sombre attire. 

Getting out of the house helped. Over time, the throb in his chest grew smaller, the knot in his throat loosened, and Diego began to create a new narrative for himself. 

* 

There were other things to distract him, outside of the Academy. Diego had to find a job, a place to live, a way to provide for himself without the rigid structure imposed by the Hargreeves patriarch. It was terrifying and thrilling and Diego absolutely refused to go crawling back. He wasn't the first sibling to leave the family home, but he was determined to not be the first to go back. 

At first it seemed as though the weight of his childhood would never leave. His history was crushing, and he never seemed to be able to take in as much oxygen as he needed. But, as the weeks turned into months, it began to become a little easier to breathe. The noose never truly loosened, but Diego found himself waking up with a certain flavour of excitement and not a cool dread. 

So, too, did he find himself forgetting the nuances of his relationship with his siblings. His mild distaste for Allison's fame and disappointment and frustration Klaus' lack of commitment began to fade until he only had a taste of bitterness on his tongue. If he stayed out long enough, Diego hoped, he might even forget those details. 

And he tried. _God_, he tried. 

Occasionally he'd spot Allison's face appeared on magazine covers and he stopped doing double takes. 

He listened to the police radio nightly, and didn't startle over every junkie. 

At some point, he stopped associating certain classical pieces with Vanya. 

Certain dates weren't immediately associated with tragic deaths. 

Not every dark-haired school boy was looked twice over, on the off chance Five had somehow made his way back. 

One afternoon, Grace called him up and explained to him in patient, calm and startlingly concise words that Luther had been in an accident. There was a beat and Diego asked if he would survive- it seemed like the kind of thing that most brothers would ask. After a pause, Grace replied in the affirmative, but asked if he'd like to visit. Luther might appreciate the company, she said. 

It wasn't a question, but a request. 

Diego made several throaty noises as he folded his laundry with one hand. 

An excuse came to his tongue with far too much ease. He was a little busy with work, he found himself saying as he ignored a pang of guilt. It wasn't a lie. Not really. Then, hurriedly, he added he'd see what he could do. 

It must have turned out alright, as the next thing he heard (a few good months later) was that Luther was on the moon. He tried to avoid thinking about what might be up there that could be of any interest. 

He told himself he wasn't jealous. It was only the fucking moon. 

* 

Things never quite turned out the way Diego expected. That, in itself, had become something of an expectation. There was a delicious irony to it. 

The police academy fell through. 

Patch fell through. 

Even his fucking new rental fell through. 

The bitterness that had haunted him since his childhood continued to plague him. Diego lived with his teeth embedded in his tongue. It was only sheer determination that had him refusing to return back to the Academy and his not-quite-parents with his metaphorical tail between his legs. 

Living in the back of a boxing gym perhaps wasn't a luxurious as Allison's abode, nor as mundane as wherever Vanya likely found herself, but at least he had a home and didn't have a crippling drug habit like some people. Hell, at least he had a postal address, unlike certain others. 

Time had soothed a lot, but it had also caused certain things to fester. 

The knot that had formed with Luther's name hanging off it had grown tighter and harder over the years. It was easier, in some ways, to focus on it now that the distance between them had grown both in time and literal miles. 

Sometimes Diego would look up at the moon and wonder where he was. If he squinted through a pair of binoculars and let his eyelashes dance across his vision, he swore he could see Luther walking across the surface and disappearing into craters. 

A part of him did wonder, albeit briefly, what Luther had done to deserve going to the moon. Diego couldn't tell if it was a gift (Luther having been _that_ kid growing up, obsessed with space and sci-fi and all that shit), or some bizarre punishment. Both seemed like solid possibilities. The old man could get pretty creative with his forms of discipline. Diego could still remember developing blisters and a click in his wrist from throwing various objects at a multitude of targets after a particularly mouthy afternoon. 

At one point, Diego picked up his phone. He turned the receiver over in his hand, fingers poised over the touch pad. His fingers traced out his childhood phone number, but he got no further than the first three digits before he hung up and went back to mopping the locker room. 

If it had been that important, somebody would have called him. If it had been that important, Mom would have told him. 

* 

And, in the end, it mustn't have been that important, because Diego never found out. None of them did. Not until it was too late. 

Seeing Luther again felt like a bad dream. To be fair, seeing all of them again under the same roof was a bit of a trip. More than once, Diego took his thumb and jabbed it right into his thigh, digging into an old wound that had scarred and tended to twinge in icy mornings. 

They had always joked that Luther was as much as a beast that lived within Ben. It had been the kind of childhood teasing that bordered on playful or cruel, depending on their collective moods. Now, though, Diego wondered if they had somehow cursed Luther. He'd shot up several inches from the last time Diego had seen him, his shoulders becoming broad and stocky. 

He'd watched Luther enter from an upper storey window. There was a strange rhythm to the way he walked. As a kid he'd been proud, with his chin raised high and a determined gaze in his eyes. Now, though, there was a hunch in his shoulders, a stoop in his spine. Maybe it was the effect of gravity, or a tic that had developed from the moon. Diego had never known Luther to feel shame. 

He tried to play. Tried to banter. Not because they had that kind of relationship when they were kids, and not because he thought Luther would respond in kind, but because Diego _hoped_ they could reach that point. Perhaps they could try for a new chapter. 

Of course it was a wistful dream. Diego should have known better. 

* 

With the family reunion came a slue of other reminders. 

Allison's shadiness, Klaus' untrustworthy habits. Vanya's sullen moods, Five's narcissism. Diego was even reminded of Ben's macabre humour. 

Most frustratingly, Diego felt the same rush around Luther that he had years ago. Time hadn't dampened that. 

His bisexuality had hit him with a strange kind of awakening shortly after his twenty-first birthday. Diego hadn't had a crisis about it, the way he supposed he might have meant to. Instead, he'd felt only a mild frustration about there being something else to set him apart from the pack. Another checkbox he could mark on a form for all the ways he didn't fit in with the norm. 

He avoided relationships with men for the same reason he avoided relationships with women. A fear of commitment, an inability to allow himself to be locked down. He didn't want people to see him, to know him, to peel back the layers and find the small, stuttering boy he had once been. 

The same stuttering mess of a thing that Luther had grown up with. 

It was so easy to fall back into that trap. 

The stutter built up on his tongue, his desperate need to prove himself threatened to spill over, and his quips and jibes became barbed and harsh. Old patterns were well worn and there for a reason. They were convenient and comfortable to fall into, even in the face of the apocalypse and eternal destruction. No matter how much he tried to scold himself for it, he couldn't unglue his tongue from the top of his mouth into a new, smother rhythm. He envied Allison for her ability, just because it made her voice liquid velvet. 

Maybe he was even more harsh than normal. Luther would look at him, his pale eyes narrowed and brows knitted together, and Diego could swear he could see the confusion on his face. Their relationship had been built on animosity in their youth, but it had never been outright cruel. 

Diego bit his tongue, over and over, until it started to bleed. 

* 

Over time, Diego began to relax. Just a little, just a fraction, inch by inch. Living with his siblings again was like wearing an old, woollen sweater, forgotten at the bottom of a drawer. Putting it on was awkward at first. It itched and pulled, twisting about in a way that was a reminder of why it had been discarded in the first place. But there was a familiarity and a comfort to it, too; he knew why he kept going back. 

Vanya began to smile a little more. Klaus' eyes were clearer more days than not. Allison stopped looking down her nose at them, Five began to crack jokes that weren't so grim. Sometimes there would be a thump from Ben (or, at the very least, something they collectively imagined to be Ben). 

Slowly, Diego began to ease around Luther. An eyeroll instead of a low blow when a remark was given about his predilection for dark turtlenecks. In turn, Luther didn't get his back up when he was given a two-for-one coupon for disposable razors. 

The peace between them was fraught with tension. Diego could feel it in the air. Every morning, he'd enter the kitchen, wondering if today would be the day where one of them would snap thoughtlessly at the other, and the house of cards they had built between them would come tumbling down. Some mornings, he could feel a dark cloud rolling over him as memories of his childhood came tapping at the walls he had set up in his mind. Reminders of what he had been, of what had happened to him- to _all_ of them. Bit by bit it would come pouring back. 

But he held his tongue. Less bite, more restraint. He smiled and, slowly, more often than not Luther would smile back. 

And Diego would hate how his heart would twist. 

* 

Luther wasn't gay. Diego was pretty damn certain about that, given his messed up history with Allison (but didn't they all have a messed up history that kept them up at night?). He was also pretty sure that Luther wasn't bisexual. That felt like less of a possibility than the former. Luther never did anything by halves. 

To be honest, Diego didn't think Luther was really much of _anything_. There was no doubt some kind of natural leaning somewhere, but by and large, the big guy hadn't had much of a chance to explore his sexuality to any degree given the roof he had lived under the majority of his life. The pickings were probably pretty slim on the moon. 

But Diego wondered. 

He watched Luther with a growing curiousity. Diego wasn't particularly hoping for anything- at least that was what he told himself. Maybe his heart skipped a beat whenever he saw Luther's eyes tracking a broad-shouldered man, or his gaze lingered on a tall brunette. And yeah, perhaps he held his breath when Luther picked up one of his workout mags, the kind with a grinning male model on the cover with text that proclaimed _FASTEST FAT BURNING WORKOUTS_. 

Luther was just tracking suspects. He was just curious about the kind of gym routines normal folk had to do to even get close to his mass. He wasn't actually _looking_, the way Diego looked. 

And it was all easy enough to push to the back of his mind. 

Diego did his nightly rounds. He listened to the police scanner, in this new, post-pre-apocalyptic world. He worked out, he trained kids at the gym. He attended his matches, and then he crawled into bed. His routine was much the same as it had always been, only now he spent several nights a week having a family dinner. He had never planned on telling his siblings much about his personal life, but it slipped out in bits and pieces, small factoids and tidbits here and there. He never anticipated on the knowledge being retained by any of them. 

It must have been, though, by at least one of them. 

One Saturday evening, he was three rounds into a match. As he raised his leg high and pivoted, moving into a sharp kick, he spotted a familiar, tow-haired face at the back of the crowd. 

Their eyes locked. 

Diego received a fist to the jaw. 

He won (barely), with a split lip and a quickly bruising brow. When he let the ref raise his hands in the air in victory, he saw Luther laughing, clapping, and him mouthing his congratulations. 

Diego couldn't breathe. Maybe it was the kick he'd received to the solar plexus. Maybe his skull had rattled due to an uppercut. Maybe it was the endorphins and adrenaline leaving his system. Maybe it was the old knife wound, where he'd been sliced between his fourth and fifth ribs; the scar tissue there had never healed right. But it felt like the oxygen had been sucked from his lungs as it had always done so long ago, and he was left standing there, grinning like a dope as Luther looked at him, actually _looked_ at him, like he was being seen for the first time. 

And _oh_, maybe he was. No longer dismal Number Two. No longer the first loser in a race for their father's unreachable approval. Luther was looking at him with bright eyes and even brighter smile, and Diego had never seen anyone delight in him like that before. 

* 

Things began to move slowly, but to Diego it felt like it had all suddenly sped up. He'd spot Luther out of the corner of his eye and he'd stop and wait, holding his breath. Other times, he'd look over the refrigerator door as he helped Grace in the kitchen, and he'd see Luther watching him, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. 

It was all a mess of tiny gestures and moments. Anyone else would dismiss it. But for Diego, whose entire life had been built up on avoiding as much contact with Luther as possible, it was the beginning of something new. 

Days trickled into weeks, and that soon became the end of the month. As Grace relished in quasi-regular family dinners again (even if it was only some of the siblings around the table and only rarely all six-with-one-ghost) and Pogo asked them to mind the mahogany tabletop, Diego found himself creeping up and up the chairs until he was sat once again opposite Luther. They bickered over who received a larger portion of potatoes but bit their tongues when asked to pass the salt. Luther even said please when he asked Diego to hand the gravy over. 

Their feet kicked under the table. Diego drew his way away. Their knees bumped, and Luther stayed put. 

Board games had never been a thing when they were children, but Five had at some point developed a relish for them and insisted. Allison enjoyed the challenge of strategy without using her abilities, Klaus promised not to let Ben help him cheat (until he was caught and then pleaded that Ben needed to be involved somehow), and Vanya seemed to quietly enjoy in simply being around her family. 

Diego sat on Luther's right. Their elbows brushed. Diego held his breath and counted back from ten, twenty, thirty, eighty. 

Someone accused him of winning due to unscrupulous methods. Luther had his back. 

A card was lodged in a wall and Pogo would later find red hotels under the couch when he went to read. _Mayfair_ was never recovered. 

That night, Diego had a cold shower and bit his knuckles until they bled. 

* 

Summer came, hot and humid, bringing with it a swath of sticky weather that left Diego scampering from his home in the recesses of the gym and back to the place he had tried to escape so long ago. At least Reginald had always valued air conditioning; he had to give the old man that. 

Apparently Luther's new body didn't handle the heat well, either. Or maybe Luther had yet to experience a summer in it; Diego had never been made privy to the length of time between the accident and his trip north. 

Heat washed over Diego. He was laying on the cold marble floor, the air conditioning humming from somewhere in the corner. Standing a good few feet from him was Luther, an ice pack draped over his neck and a glass of iced sweet tea raised to his brow. He had shucked his usual overcoat and was wearing a tank top that was straining at the neckline. Distantly, Diego realised it was the first time he'd seen Luther willingly baring his body. That felt like it should have carried more importance, but it was too hot to think that far. 

Luther was watching him. He wasn't just standing there mindlessly, he was _watching_. Studying. Maybe it was weird. Diego wasn't the kind to simply laze in one of the countless abandoned rooms of the Academy, even if he knew for a fact that this one caught the least amount of sun in summer and was therefore one of the coolest. His shirt was off and balled up under his head to act as a makeshift pillow. 

Breathing deep, Diego waited as Luther's eyes ran down the length of his body. Something swelled up inside of him; a childhood need to roll away, which he squashed. It was accompanined, peculiarly, by an adult desire to stay there and preen, which he too held back. Instead, he lay there and forced himself to breathe. Luther was allowed to look. He just had to stay still. 

It was difficult to watch Luther, with the angle at which he was positioned. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw him kneel, his shadow stretching out behind him. With a breath, Diego forced his eyes closed and waited. 

Luther's hand was as large and rough as he remembered. He'd been picked up by them over the years, hauled over a shoulder and tossed about when he wasn't in a position to get himself out of whatever sticky situation they'd wound up in. Now he felt them running down his bare chest. There was a faint tickle of fur, a slight coarseness that might be new. But they were still distinctly Luther. 

Taking a deep breath in through his nose, Diego remained as still as could be. The firm, steady hands splayed over his ribcage, his belly, and pressed ever so slightly. Diego could almost feel his pulse against Luther's hand, a steady thump from his stomach. 

Then, as quickly as he came over, he was gone. Cracking open an eye when the pressure had been alleviated, he watched Luther go. The room no longer felt cool. 

* 

Luther kissed him. 

Diego had always thought if anything were to happen, in some wild, distant future, he'd be the one to make the first move. He'd be cool and calm and suave, with all the moves he had practised from movies he was sure Luther had never seen. 

It didn't happen like that. 

It was clumsy and off-centre (because that was Luther all over), and Diego was covered in dust and splinters from sanding down the door frame. He had been in the middle of working on the last bit of damage to the house from the could-have-been apocalypse. He was covered in sweat and he was vaguely itchy everywhere, and Luther, with his impeccable timing as always, kissed him. 

If Diego had had a moment to collect himself, he might have been able to play it off. He could be smooth, act coy. But he didn't, because this was Luther, and this was _him_. 

He tripped over his words. He uttered a few choice four-letter words. He stumbled and stuttered over the hard syllables, popping his _Ps _and fumbled his _F_s and felt himself sag between the wall and Luther's hands. Sweat covered his lower back and ran down his brow and his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. 

He could fight it. Diego was used to fighting against his own desires and sensibilities. His whole life had been less about doing what he wanted and more about proving he could be just as good, if not better, as Number One. Giving into himself and pursuing his own interests was a foreign, bewildering experience. 

He could fight it, he _should_ fight it. But as Luther squeezed his biceps, his thumbs pressing in as Diego flexed underneath his grip, he found his morale to resist lowering. Maybe he could have cleaned up a little, requested Luther give him time to shower and get the dust off his hands and face, but his mouth was filled with the type of stops and starts that had haunted him in his youth. Vowels were stuck in his throat and consonants rolled around his mouth, and it was far easier to rock up onto his toes and tilt his chin up and meet Luther's mouth with his own, with the innate aim that flowed through him like ichor. 

There was more than a little amount of satisfaction to be taken in the way Luther froze. The way he cautiously opened his mouth and returned the kiss. The tiny noise of surprise that came from him, far too small and high to be from someone of his height and bulk. But Diego lapped it up, relishing the opportunity to prove just how stronger he was for once. 

* 

Luther was underneath him. His skin was hot. It always threw Diego, how warm Luther ran. Diego couldn't recall if he'd ran that hot when they were kids, sparring on the gym mat and feeling their muscles throb and air burn in their lungs. Diego had been able to get a grip on Luther then. Sure, he'd still been tall, but he was far more wiry, with sharp shoulders that fit perfectly in Diego's hands when he managed to pin him, albeit briefly. 

He pinned him now. He tried to, at any rate. He'd had a fighting chance when they were a scrap of their adult selves. At the very least, Diego could hold on and grit his teeth and refuse to budge when Luther tried to throw him off. 

Luther could probably easily pluck him off now and toss him aside with barely a thought. He didn't, though. Diego's fingers curled around his shoulders, his thumb pressed under the long, sharp jut of his collar bones, and he held on. The coarse hair- or was it fur? Where was the line drawn? Maybe he'd ask later- teased his palms. It reminded him of some jab about what masturbating did to a young man, but Diego squashed the idea down. 

The gym wasn't a romantic setting. It wasn't candlelit dinners and coloured gauze on lampshades and weird smooth jazz. Instead, sweat permeated the air and Diego could taste chalk. It made sense for them to come together here, though. Everything had always happened in the gym. It had been a prison and a sanctuary all in one; Diego had trained his whole life to be better than Luther. Now, he finally felt as though maybe he could be his equal. 

Luther had started to close the gap when he'd visited him in another gym. Now, Diego had taken it back to familiar territory. 

His fingers burned from the barbell and there was a pinch in his back from where he'd lost his form when Luther had surprised him. He sagged forward and let his brow fall to Luther's, their noses touching as he sank down further on his cock, letting it fill him. 

Everything was slick, everything felt heated by several hundred degrees. His fingers squeezed again and again, his mouth open and desperate pants coming from him as his head fell from Luther's until their cheeks pressed together. Luther was far more quiet than Diego expected, but he could hear him panting and whining in his ear. His nails clawed up Diego's back, his palms spreading wide as he held him down close. 

It had been so long since Diego had done this. It had always been a rarity. But now he rolled his hips, swaying down to match Luther's thrust up. Luther was inexperienced, nervous, and it soothed Diego a little to know he wasn't the only one to be off his game. 

With a somewhat dulled, delayed reaction, his mind a spin with all that was happening, what he was participating in. There was a deep thrum of bass from the stereo that was plugged in by the wall, there was an acrid scent of metal from the heavy weights, his fingers were still covered in chalk. 

Luther thrust up. Diego gave a small cry, his eyes shutting as his held fell back a little. Luther's tongue swiped up the front of his throat, over the stubble and to his chin. 

'_Luther_\- ' 

His name was easy to say. It had always been easy to say. All soft consonants, one syllable melting into the next. Nothing to trip over, nothing to fumble with. He could lose himself in Luther's name. He could lose himself in Luther. 

Luther's moved higher, until he nipped at Diego's chin and kissed him. It had gotten better since their first time. His mouth was warm, solid, and Diego lapped at it, letting his tongue roam freely. A hand cupped the back of his head, another the small of his spine, and he fell willingly against Luther. 

'_Diego_,' came the guttural reply. 

With a gasp, Diego let himself collapse forward. His body shook as he came, his brow pressed to Luther's shoulder as felt himself wrack in Luther's arms. He couldn't tell where Luther started and he ended, but it didn't matter. They had met as one. 

Some things were worth coming home for. 


End file.
